Storyteller + Social Media Maven

7 Girly Pinterest Marketing Tips

At my “big girl job,” I’ve been spending a lot of time optimizing our company’s Pinterest profiles. Now that I’m actually getting some work done here on the blog, I decided it was time to apply the same tactics to my own Pinterest account.

It was actually kind of a trip; I started using Pinterest literally as soon as it was available, so cleaning up my pins and pin boards was like going back in time. It was exhausting, but pretty awesome. Now, I’m finally ready to use it as a business tool!

If you’re using Pinterest for your business, you’ll want to make sure that you’re not just blindly pinning content. Pinterest is definitely overlooked as far as social media marketing tools, but if you have the right audience and you do it right, it could easily be one of your top influencers.

I’ve done quite a bit of research to prepare the optimization of my boards at work, and I’ve compiled my top tips and things to think about, so that you don’t have to sort through all the long articles I read.

Pinterest Tips: Spark-noted

KEYWORDS EVERYWHERE: They’re super important for your board descriptions and even more important for individual pin descriptions. Be smart with your keywords; Be vague, but also clear and concise. Protip: Pin descriptions perform the best when they are between 200 and 500 characters.

Use hashtags sparingly: The same way you want to be strategic with your keywords, apply the same with hashtags. Don’t use a million of them (3 to 5 will suffice), or it looks like spam.

Make your boards pretty! Since I was pinning as an adolescent, I ended up going through and deleting a ton of pins that were blurry or just looked like crap for one reason or another. You want people to like browsing your boards, and they won’t do that if you have a ton of ugly pins (as girly as that sounds, it’s the cold-hearted truth and just how girls are).

Don’t forget about board topics: This is crucial for Pinterest searches. When you go to edit your board, make sure your board isn’t listed as ‘other’ under topics, unless it doesn’t fall into any of the other topics. If it’s a DIY board, you best be sure it’s listed there so that your pins and boards appear higher in Pinterest search results.

Put your best pin forward: Once your board is up to par, go back to edit the description and choose the main photo. Make sure it’s not cut off in a weird place, that it’s pretty, and is a good overall image-description of the board.

Keep your best boards near the top: If you own a boutique, you’re going to put your prettiest (and probably more expensive) garments in the windows and on display. The same principle applies to where your boards are placed, so re-arrange them based on what your audience likes and where you’re pinning the most.

Utilize Secret Boards: I used this as a way to move my pins around without overloading followers with pins, but it’s also a great tool for starting brand new boards. Start pinning to it and, once it’s ready, make it public. That way, you don’t have a handful of pins on the board. You also don’t spam your audience with content as you create it.